


Going Up or Down

by candlelight660



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, De-Aged Derek, Headcanon - 4x02, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1844605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlelight660/pseuds/candlelight660
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Derek, what year is it?” He knows Derek’s name. It shouldn’t surprise him since he just said that they were kind of friends but it does, it does surprise him to hear the boy say his name. He wants to know his name, Derek thinks and maybe he did once. It makes no sense though; he is sure that he has never seen the boy at school before.</p><p>“It is 2002, sure you know that.” He answers the ridiculous question; maybe he is checking for concussion and will ask about the president next but werewolves don’t have concussion, he wants to shout at the human kid but he holds his tongue. He doesn’t want to make him angry or afraid; he just wants his goddamn answers because he just doesn’t understand. </p><p>“Derek, it is 2012.”</p><p>The boy blinks. Derek blinks. They stare each other and Derek can see the light brown color getting full with emotion and he wonders if the kid has a stable eye color; they were amber before and now they are brown and it is confusing like all of this. It is confusing that the kid can lie with having a stable heartbeat, without his eyes flattering, without his pupils dilating or his voice trembling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Up or Down

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had to write what I think should happen for 4x02 but probably it won't but a girl can dream, right?
> 
> So here are something things you should know about:  
> -Not beta'd.  
> -De-Aged is 17 in this fanfiction and the year that Teen Wolf is going on is 2012.  
> -Young Derek and Deaton are acquaintances; Derek knows that he is his mother's emissary and has been to the clinic.  
> -Also, I didn't enjoy writing Kate's scene with Derek and even though they are normal scenes, I still hate Kate/Derek's relationship but I had to write it through Derek's mind and I just wanted you guys to know.
> 
> I think you are all good to go, have fun!

Derek is confused.

He doesn’t understand what is going on.

Every muscle in his body hurts like he had a rough full moon and his head is very dizzy, he can’t even find himself to protest when he is put in a jeep by people he don’t know. They took him out of somewhere, a tomb Derek thinks, and he doesn’t even remember getting there. Everything is confusing and weird and all he wants to do is go home. His mom is looking for him, Derek is sure of that. He knows that his dad will find him no matter what with Laura and Cora will just punch him in the arm for getting lost – or kidnapped Derek thinks though he is not so sure – and everything will be fine.

What is not fine is people around him. Derek thinks that he should be skeptical about these people; he doesn’t have any information or memory about where he is or he got here so they could be the cause of it. Something inside him is telling him that they are on his side, whatever that means. Derek knows that he should always listen to his instincts because his instincts are the key for survival; that is what his mom has taught him. His instincts are telling him that he can stay, he can stay put where he is and he shouldn’t try to flee or fight so he doesn’t. 

The boy about his age is the only male other than him in the car and he is human; he just moves a lot like he can’t help himself while driving the jeep. When Derek first saw the group of people around him, he saw the boy looking at him with his big, amber eyes and Derek wanted to remember something about him but there was just nothing. He trusts him, he has decided after a while but he doesn’t even know why. Maybe it is his smell; this smell that pulls Derek towards him, a mixture of cinnamon and freshly-cut grass and bitter chocolate. He always has loved bitter chocolate but that is not the point.

The one sitting next to the boy is a brunette girl that is a werecoyote, Derek has heard of them from his uncle and mother but never seen one before. She smells similar to werewolves but her smell is sharper and just different; the girl overall smells like fresh leaves and dirt and bushes. She smells like survival, if Derek has to give her scent a name. The other two girls are sitting next to him; one a beautiful redhead that smells alien. She smells like dirt also but not like the brunette; brunette smelled like mud and grassy ground while she smells like sand and debris. She also smells like blood but like fresh mint and ocean breeze with a touch of a flower that Derek forgot. She is not human but Derek doesn’t know what she is, just something… alien.

The last girl with black hair is not human also; she is more alike to Derek and the brunette than the redhead but she is also a different species. Her scent is like marshmallows and chips but there is also something darker and richer about her smell, something that he cannot place.

The permanent smell in the car is loss though; coming mostly from the boy and the redhead. Derek mind tries to remember something about this but there is no information to be found.

Nobody talks for a long time but then the boy sighs like he can’t take it anymore and just speaks. “Do you remember us?” His voice is bitter and wondering and makes Derek feel bad although he doesn’t understand why.

“No.” He replies simply as he goes back to his half-asleep state, looking outside the window. They are middle of a desert and Derek again wonders what he has gotten himself into as he falls asleep without even realizing.

*******

When he wakes up, he is in somewhere familiar. He is lying in a bed that is not his; too soft and bouncy to be his and looks around the room. The smell is familiar, he decides but not too much; just a faint smell that he knows but can’t address to. The more familiar smell is coming from outside and Derek gets off the bed, looks outside and sees that he is in Beacon Hills; his instincts are shouting at him that he is home. He doesn’t have any memory coming here and doesn’t understand how he is here. Everything is such a blur that it makes him sick.

Derek looks around the room and sees some posters of groups that he does not recognize. He sees a photograph of a group of teenagers also; all smiling and happy. There is the alpha that saved him, the boy who was driving, the redhead together with another brunette girl, a curly haired boy, a blonde and a black boy. Derek remembers none of them.

He hears some footsteps coming his way and he gets closer to the window if he has to flee; the boy that was driving is coming, he remembers him from his smell. He knocks on the open door as he looks at Derek’s face and Derek swears that there is something familiar about him. The boy hesitates, his hands clasped together but his fingers moving madly as his body stays in a tense position.

“You don’t know me.” He says as he steps inside the room. “You used to know me.” He mumbles too low that Derek almost misses it.

The boy’s voice is exhausted and fed-up while his scent turns into something more bitterly with emotions and Derek wants to remember but he can’t. He should be running away; not staying at this place that smells like the alpha’s but Derek’s instincts are telling him to stay again so he stays. The alpha’s scent is weird also, not quite like an alpha’s and Derek wonders if there is something not weird or odd about this group. The boy takes a calculated step as he watches Derek’s face and takes another one when he sees Derek doesn’t react to his motion.

“We used to be…” He stops talking like he can’t find any good words, his voice full with question marks.

“Friends?” Derek offers. That is the best that he can do as he is trying to grasp what is going on. He decides to not flee; he decides that there is really no danger for him here. The boy looks surprised like he didn’t wait Derek to talk at all. “No,” he says after a while of silence like he has considered the word, “that doesn’t quite sum it up but let’s go with that.”

“Tell me what is going on.” Derek sounds demanding but he doesn’t care; he wants answers. He hates being the dark, always have hated it when his mother would hide pack stuff from them or Laura wouldn’t tell what they are talking about with mother when she seemed serious and shaken. The boy lowers his eyes to the ground and his expression changes, like he is in pain and Derek doesn’t understand why the urge comes to touch him and takes his pain. As far as he knows, he is just a stranger that took him out of somewhere and brought him home that is Beacon Hills but didn’t take him home where to his family and pack is.

“You wouldn’t believe if I told you.” The boy talks quietly as he raises his eyes from the ground to meet Derek’s.

“Try me.” He says firmly as he looks at the boy’s eyes with the same expression.

“Derek, what year is it?” He knows Derek’s name. It shouldn’t surprise him since he just said that they were kind of friends but it does, it does surprise him to hear the boy say his name. He wants to know his name, Derek thinks and maybe he did once. It makes no sense though; he is sure that he has never seen the boy at school before.

“It is 2002, sure you know that.” He answers the ridiculous question; maybe he is checking for concussion and will ask about the president next but werewolves don’t have concussion, he wants to shout at the human kid but he holds his tongue. He doesn’t want to make him angry or afraid; he just wants his goddamn answers because he just doesn’t understand.

“Derek, it is 2012.”

The boy blinks. Derek blinks. They stare each other and Derek can see the light brown color getting full with emotion and he wonders if the kid has a stable eye color; they were amber before and now they are brown and it is confusing like all of this. It is confusing that the kid can lie with having a stable heartbeat, without his eyes flattering, without his pupils dilating or his voice trembling. He is too much of a teenager to be good at lying like this and Derek wonders if he is a hunter briefly for a second but decides against it; he doesn’t feel like a hunter, doesn’t make him want to run away or tear him apart. He makes him feel something that Derek hasn’t understood yet.

He remembers Kate. He doesn’t understand why memories of her rush to his brain at that exact moment but he remembers Kate. He remembers her charming smile, the casual winks that she gives him when he was staring at her, her relaxed body language whenever she is around him. He wonders where she is; nearly remembering something recent about her but fails. He makes a frustrated sound that changes the emotions on boy’s face; he becomes even more worried and hesitant. He looks at him and he wants to howl like he never has before; he wants to howl so strong that his pack could hear him from miles and miles away but he doesn’t have the strength. It is the weirdest feeling that he have ever felt; like his pack isn’t there anymore, like he isn’t part of pack but just an omega. It drives him mad.

“Tell me something!” He shouts at him so loud, filled with rage and some kind of sorrow that he knows the boy won’t understand.

The boy’s expression changes into a sorry one; his eyes closing a little, his body becoming less tense like it has given up, his face looks like Derek just told him that he was a useless person. Derek hears the harsh breathing, senses the sadness, and feels the tension. The boy has sense his sorrow and he is reacting to it, and it baffles Derek to a greater extent. Who is he? Derek wants to know desperately, he can feel something about the boy but doesn’t even know how to name the feeling.

“My name is Stiles, though it is not my real name because it is an abomination that couldn’t be called as a name because it would insult other names yet when you first heard it, you pronounced it perfectly like it was just a basic word. Nobody could say it like that, not after she died.”

Derek understands that this some kind of a confession. The boy’s grief and sadness hits him so hard that he doesn’t know what to do. His heartbeats are slower as his eyes have turned a few shades darker, never leaving the floor. His scent is like Cora’s tears when she hurt a human for the first time and Paige’s discomfort when she told Derek that she was afraid that they could not make it work because of their differences. It is strange; for this boy – Stiles – who is a stranger to him to remind him of Cora and Paige. Derek is never good with emotions but every werewolf knows that touch helps in times of pain and stress and he wants to go and touch this boy’s hand or hug him and take his pain away.

He doesn’t do it.

He does murmur that he is sorry and he doesn’t know much about losing people and he thinks that the boy doesn’t hear it but he does and looks at him like he just heard the strangest sentence in his life. Derek, again, doesn’t understand why.

“What happened to me?” He asks but Stiles doesn’t answer. He doesn’t talk after Derek’s sentence as he stands there and does nothing. For a few minutes, Derek lets him have it his way because he is not heartless; he can see that the boy is in pain so he lets him do whatever he wants which is nothing. After a few minutes, he asks again and again but he doesn’t answer. He snaps at him this time and nearly shouts and Stiles is awaken from his trance and looks at Derek with weary eyes. 

“I don’t know.” His voice is too quiet and Derek can literally see that he is having a fight with himself but doesn’t know the reason. “I have to go now.” He says it fast and he is just gone; he doesn’t rush out of the room but he moves fast like it physically hurts him to spend more time in the room. Derek is left with more questions that he can actually progress and his head hurts.

*******

He is furious. He tried to leave the room after sitting a while more in it, examining the room. Derek doesn’t know what he had expected from the alpha’s room but it was just a teenager’s room; he sees a Blink 182 poster but all the members’ looks much older than Derek remembers and he grunts like he is pain. Stiles told him that they are in 2012 but that is not possible. Ten years… How could he have ended up ten years ahead, if it was true? Did he time travel, Derek tries to think if he has lately done a strange thing and remembers that he touched something in Deaton’s office; maybe that is the cause and if it is, he is so grounded and Laura and Cora is going to laugh their asses off. He wants to get out of the small place that he is in so he goes to the door and tries to exist but he can’t. He is forced back into the room and he hits the wall, the pain is immediate then fading and healing. They have magically imprisoned him inside the alpha’s room.

He finds it in himself to howl, finally. He howls like he hasn’t in a long while; not since he had broken his both his legs when he was ten and they have gone to visit distant relatives and fell down near an area where Northern Blue Monkshoods are growing; which is a rare type of wolfsbane and Derek wanted to laugh at his luck but instead he howled. He howled so loud and urgently that his mother appeared beside him in less than a minute; her eyes glowing dangerously red but her expression soft and caring. He took Derek into her arms and took his pain, carried him out of where the wolfsbane plants were and took him to safety. The only time his mother hugged him like that ever again was after Paige died.

He howls with such force that it shakes the house, or that was how he felt. He howls until he can’t anymore; until all the power in his body is drained and his legs give up and he falls down. His eyes are still electric blue and his claws are out when he is on the ground, his breathing fast and short. He feels pain but it is not physical; he wonders where his family, pact is as he lays down on the floor and just waits. He waits for his father to appear outside the window, see Laura rushing down the corridor; he even waits for Peter to come. He waits and nothing happens.

*******

Derek is sitting on the alpha’s bed, without waiting for a thing to happen. He had looked at some more stuff at the alpha’s room and found out that the alpha’s name was Scott McCall, he was going to Beacon Hills and he had friends. He also found an official paper which was dated as: _4/9/2012._ He threw the paper to the trash bin.

He doesn’t know how to cope with this. He may be actually in the future and that is terrifying. That means that he has lost ten years; a whole decade. Derek feels sick again. All of a sudden he feels a presence and lifts his head; wondering how the person managed to sneak up at him with even him noticing, he doesn’t smell anything or hear a heartbeat for that matter. He sees Kate and his body is under shock, he wasn’t waiting to see her. It only lasts a few seconds as his muscles relax but his surprised expression stays. Kate is here for him and Derek doesn’t know what to do with that; Kate is going to get him out of here and give him some answers.

“Kate.” He tries to greet casually but even his voice sounds puzzled as Kate takes a step to him.

“Hey handsome.” She greats back as she leans on the doorframe, her voice is soft and warm and that is the only thing that feels actually familiar and he can remembers. He can remember her using that voice when she whispers complaints to his ear, after she kisses him, when they sneak out in the middle of the night. He can remember something and he feels better all of a sudden.

He is the off the bed when he talks again. “Why can’t I feel you? Why no heartbeats, no scent?” He questions.

He wants to be at least clear about Kate because he can hold on to her; he always has been able to hold on to her. After Paige, Derek was a mess. He felt like he could never be fixed, he would be always broken and unneeded by other people. He has caused her first love to die, who would want someone like that in their lives? That is when Kate got in the picture; after months of self-loathe and despair. Kate held him, hugged him, assured him, wanted him, and needed him as much as he needed her. Now she is the one who is going to save him, like she usually does. She smiles at him gently as he moves even closer. Derek thinks that something is off, even though he doesn’t know what. He gets angry at himself for think that; nobody came to save him and Kate is here now, Kate is saving him and he doubts her? _Hale,_ he thinks to himself, _you need to pull your shit together._

“I am not actually here sweetheart. I couldn’t come because they would kill me, like they killed them. I am inside your mind; I know this witch who owes me a favor and she helped me to contact you, to reach out to you.” She moves even closer, her blue eyes fixated on Derek as her smile grows bigger. “You can’t trust them Derek, no matter what they say or do; don’t trust them.”

A part of Derek wants her to give him space because he feels like he is suffocating from the closeness. He doesn’t understand though, they have been closer with each other but right now, even though they are a few feet away; even that seems way too close. A part of him is disappointed because she isn’t really here but at least she came to him, even took help from a witch to talk to him; Derek doesn’t know how he even doubts her.

“Who did they kill?” Derek finds himself asking, words leaving his mouth without permission.

Kate’s happy expression fades away as she slowly shakes her head, her eyes looking at him like a mother trying to explain their child a thing they cannot bear to think. “I am so sorry Derek but they are all gone. Your family… It just happened so fast. I couldn’t help them, barely got out of there alive.”

Derek looks at her and falls down to the bed, his eyes big and his heart so much in pain that he feels like his chest is about to explode. He believes her; he doesn’t even to try denying it. The feeling of no longer belonging to the pack, the fact that none of his family members have returned his howl, that they are not looking for Derek alongside with Kate no matter what their differences are; it just clicks. 

He wants to close his eyes and wake up from this nightmare; wake up to the normal world where all of his family is well and he is in time where he is supposed to be, he wants to wake up and have to go to school and banter with Laura while Cora attacks him for stealing her breakfast and his dad chuckling at them and goes to the garage and his mother shouting for order with her alpha-slash-mother voice and Laura drives them to Beacon Hills High and everything is just as it’s supposed to be.

Kate lets that sink in as she goes down on her knees and looks at Derek with a sympathetic look, like she understands but how can Kate understand the feeling of losing his whole family? How can anyone understand that? He feels so disoriented; with all the information that he has received, he doesn’t know which are to true and which are to be trusted.

“You can’t trust them Derek.” That is the only thing Kate says like she knows the confusion he is going through, before she disappears from his sight; vanishing with the blink of his eyes. He lies down on bed and thinks how this did happen to him; tries so hard to remember but there is nothing again but frustration and darkness.

Kate said that they killed his family. Was she talking about the teenager pact? He remembers Stiles’s eyes and the redhead’s grief, and maybe that should be a sign for them being sorry for murdering his family. Derek doesn’t think that though; he trusts them in a way that makes no logical sense but he trusts them with his life. He doesn’t understand but he does, he does trust them.

*******

Derek must have fallen asleep at some point. He doesn’t remember when he did but he knows that he is dreaming. He sees Paige, his Paige, playing the cello softly but with passion and Derek feels like he is falling in love with her again. The song that she is performing reminds him of Paige; reminds him of her smile when she looked Derek’s way, makes him think of the pleased expression that she would have when Derek came to pick up from her cello practice, the way she would hold his hand when he needed a boost of courage or the way she would kiss her ever so softly when he felt down. 

Their relationship was different then what he has with Kate; what he had with Paige was pure, they were each other’s first love and that was enough for them. What he has with Kate feels like a grown-ups relationship; they fight with each other for a minute then kiss each other the next, scream at each other for hours and then make up in seconds, there is sometimes no stability and then they are each other’s anchor. He misses what he had with Paige; the easiness of it. How they could just lie together in each other’s arm and fell asleep and nobody would expect more and they would be fine with it. Derek misses to get her wet in summer when she is trying to practice cello outside, the way she would run after him and Derek would go extra slowly for her to catch him and push him to the ground to hug him and make him also wet.

The song finishes and Derek thoughts also stop, concentrating on Paige more than anything. “You look older. It kind of suits you but also looks weird, especially the eyebrows.” She comments as she starts packing her stuff.

Derek doesn’t understand much; it has been only a year since her death and he knows that he has grown a few inches taller and maybe his eyebrows are thicker and his front tooth are getting a bit sharper like a bunnies – which Derek would only ever, ever agree in his thoughts – but other than that he is pretty much the same guy on the outside. When she finishes packing, she gets her stuff and walks towards Derek who is currently sitting down on the second row of the auditorium, and sits next to him. She touches his face with her delicate fingers and Derek leans into the touch, making Paige’s lips curl into a small and private smile that she would give Derek when they looked at each other after kissing or Derek had told her something that he had never told someone before or when he would take her out for breakfast on Saturdays.

“You are not lost, though you feel that way. You found me, after pushing me away for so long. Don’t push people away Derek, it is not good. You built up too many walls over the years.” She says in this very quiet and thoughtful voice, her expression relaxed and caring.

Derek frowns because it has been only months, not years. Her words make him feel safe though, make him feel at home and at ease. “I miss you.” He says and then stops.

There is something very wrong with his voice.

It is much thicker; sounding more assuring then his normal voice.  He touches his face, trying to feel the familiar shapes and softness but he is greeted by harshness of hair and he is shocked. He touches all the other parts of his face and they are the same except for the much thicker eyebrows and again, for the hundredth time, he doesn’t understand. Paige just looks at him with her big, soft brown eyes and touches his arm and he touches her hand because it makes him feel better.

“Don’t listen to things that you are hearing. Listen to your heart and instincts because you were always your best when you listened but didn’t think.” She comes closer and kisses him lightly, so light that he barely feels it and she is gone.

Derek thinks that people around him should stay and actually make sense because all they do is disappear and leave him even more confused though Paige’s words actually helps. He really is his best when he listens to his guts and doesn’t overthink because his mother always put him as soul when she was naming the triskele after her kids; Laura being the mind and Cora being the body and him being the soul. She always told him that he had the better chance to survive as an omega than many wolves than she has known because Derek knew how to listen to his inner wolf better than most around her. He stands up as the dream starts to change; the auditorium crippling into dust and suddenly he is standing in front of a mirror in a very bright room.

He has gotten much taller, he sees. His eyes are the only feature that he can remember of himself and as he looks at the mirror, he knows that he is seeing himself in the future. Paige was right; his eyebrows are much thicker and they look like they want to be knit together as his eyes goes all over his body. He is far more built than he thought that he would be but he doesn’t mind, who would mind a few extra pairs of muscle? His bunny teeth are really there and Derek actually wonders if it is doing of Laura because she would call him a bunny when they were little because Derek loved carrots, he curses her. He doesn’t look bad, not at all but there is something off with him. Maybe it is the straight pose that he is standing or the nearly-knitted eyebrows or the fact that his eyes are shining not with mischief like they used to but with something darker; he knows that he have actually grown at some point and then become a kid again and the realization of that hits him like a speed train and he wakes up so fast that he nearly tears all the sheets with his claws.

*******

The alpha – Scott, he reminds himself – comes into the room when Derek only has been awake for a few minutes. He never had the ability to really look at him before but he knows that he smells like sugar and flowers but also of forests and storms and that weird Alpha smell that he have never sensed before. He is not like other alphas that he has met before; probably it is because of his age, he looks more fidgety and unexperienced and he looks like he wants to ask Derek something but he can’t.

“What do you want?” Derek asks to make it easier for the both of them.

“I want to give you answers but I can’t give you so I want to take you somewhere where they can.”

He sounds honest and sincere enough and he is not using the voice that alphas usually use when they want things to get done and Derek is quite desperate for answers but he remembers Kate’s words. He looks at this boy with big, puppy like eyes and face and he just sighs and closes his eyes, listening to his instincts like his mother and Paige told him and opens them when he has an answer.

“Fine, lead the way.”

*******

Derek doesn’t understand himself. He should be angry with them; at the least for making a prisoner in the alpha’s room and about Kate’s words but he is not feeling anger, he just has the need of some answers and Derek thinks that his need for something that he can hold onto is blocking every other emotions way. They are inside Stiles’s jeep with him driving again and he is on the back seat, the same place where he was a couple of nights ago. When Stiles started the engine and drive, he also started talking.

He says that Derek blacked out when they found him in Mexico but doesn’t answer Derek’s question when he asks if they knew what he was doing at Mexico, and says they were trying to understand why Derek didn’t remember any of them. Derek feels like there is more to this story because even though Stiles’s heartbeat isn’t becoming faster, it is not the steadiest heartbeat that he has heard. It is more like he is leaving stuff out so Derek decides to ask questions.

“Was I older?” That is the question that has been bothering him the most.

“Yes.” The answer doesn’t come from Stiles; it is Scott who replies with a firm voice.

“Why did I become 17 again?”

“We don’t know.” This time Stiles answers, his voice sharp and edgy like it is also bothering him.

“Why does Scott smell weird?” He first thought of saying the alpha but change his mind, deciding that he would get more answers if he sounded friendly. Stiles almost runs the jeep over some kids walking on the pavement and Scott looks astonished as far as he can see from the rear back mirror.

“You remember me!” Scott says with a chocked voice like he can’t quite believe it. “Why didn’t you tell anything before?”

“Because I don’t. I saw your name multiple times in your room and add up two and two.”

Derek sighs and continues to look outside the car; the place once he called home is not the same. There some shops that he recognizes but they look much older, some of them needing re-doing painting and some needing new signs. He doesn’t want to catch a glimpse of their sad or shattered faces; he can’t deal with that stuff right now. He is still trying to digest so much. He understands why he is not angry; he still doesn’t believe that this is real. He is still waiting for himself to wake up by Laura shaking him or Cora pulling his hair, saying that he over-slept and is getting late for school. Once his dad told them that he saw a dream that felt like a whole year so that could be what is going on as far as Derek cares.

When they pull outside a clinic, Derek is positive that this is a dream. His mind brings him to a familiar place to make him feel safe; that is the only logical explanation. When he gets out of the car quickly and eyes the clinic though, he starts to wonder some facts. The clinic looks older if not broken; it just looks different than Derek remembers. He can’t quite place it but he can feel inside him that it is not the same place, not exactly. When Scott tells him to follow him, he does.

When he enters the clinic; he is hit by many other smells. He smells the redhead but there is a familiar one; he smells Deaton which baffles and he has to stop for a second. He feels disoriented again and he gets dizzy; like the earth underneath his feet is shaking with a great force that Derek can’t stand still. “Dude, I think he is having a panic attack.” He hears Stiles’s voice from a distance and sees Deaton coming out from the back of the clinic, his face looking worried. The redhead is just behind him but Derek doesn’t focus on her; Deaton is the one he wants. He lets his wolf take over him as he goes for the emissary; knowing that his mother would kill her if she saw him going after their emissary but Derek remembers that she is probably dead and he doesn’t even care anymore.

He sees Deaton going down, though doesn’t really remember hitting him but knows that he is the cause of it. The redhead looks shocked and Derek can actually feel her fear but he can also sense anger. His wolf isn’t interested in her though, he watches Deaton with careful eyes like he does in full moons when he wants to hunt. He is so focused on Deaton that he doesn’t recognize a wolf attacking him until it does and he tries to fight; he tries to claw and hit and bite every inch of skin that he can find and the other wolf lets him and just howls.

Derek feels like he is hit by a truck.

He knows that howl and the smell hits afterwards and he just submits as he stays on the ground. The smell of Peter is much darker than he remembers; he smells like rotten bread and snails but he still has that strong smell of snow and ice with pepper. The howl is a howl only Hales knows how to do; lower in frequency and more melodic than a proper howl, quite distinctive to the ears of animals. This howl is their family anchor; if someone howls like this, it is to anchor someone. It is not used for calling the pack or making noise; it is more sacred and not to be used if there are no chances. They are all taught of it but most of them forget this howl even exists, including Derek and he is even surprised that Peter remembers.

When he is back to his human form, he is shaking like a leaf in the wind and Peter is standing in front of him with his usual glory but the expression on his eyes is a bit softer than usual. He is much older; there are even wrinkles that are barely showing but there and there is this bitterness than usual that Derek cannot place. “I think we have a lot to talk about nephew.”

*******

His whole family is dead; except for Peter and Cora. Later; Stiles told him when Peter was distracted that Laura and Derek were the only survivors, at least they thought so and Cora was found later and Peter was good as dead so Cora went a relative that lives in South America and she is now in a pack there. Laura and he lived in New York until Laura came back to Beacon Hills and was killed by Peter who gathered himself after six long years to become the alpha. Then Derek killed Peter and he became the alpha but Peter was brought back to life by Lydia who is a Banshee and at least Derek knows what a Banshee is because this story sounds much more of a circus show or a TV movie than to be anyone’s life. Derek was reunited with Cora because of an alpha pack – which Derek can’t believe that it even exists or existed and believes that his life is controlled by someone whom life was destroyed by a Derek and he is getting revenge now– and Derek gave up his alpha status to save Cora from dying and then Cora wanted to leave again to be with her pack but Derek didn’t stay with them. He doesn’t understand how the future Derek put up with all that; he feels fragile already from listening to the horrible and twisted story that is to be his.

There is of course a cherry for the top of the cake because this story has to have one, a big plump one.

He asks how his family died; how did anyone manage to kill his entire pack? Apparently a hunter set up all the right people to light up his family on a lunar eclipse. He demands to know who did it but they don’t answer and Derek starts shouting and destroying things and he just finds his way out but can’t get far away because his legs just gives in and he goes down on to the ground with his back plastered to the wall for support.

His whole pack is dead. Laura was alive but she died because of Peter. He killed Peter and became an alpha but Peter get back to life and he was reunited with his sister and he became a beta again to save her and she left and he is still alive.

Someone sure should have given him a medal for ‘the best enduring creature of the year’ because the things that he had just heard are crazy and fucked-up.

What is more fucked-up is his whole pack is dead because of Kate. They never answered but Derek just knew because it is his life, right? Of course the woman who gave him comfort after so much of self-loathe would kill his entire family just for fun, right? Derek feels so sick and fed-up and disgusted that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants this rage inside him to get loose so that he could feel a bit free but hasn’t he learned his lesson; there is not a good day for Derek Hale, it is either endurance day or getting ass-kicked day or all the people you care about dying day.

They always said that anger was a strong anchor. Derek didn’t understand before; his anchor had been always pact and family; the triskele was his anchor. The triskele of mind being Laura and the body being Cora with Derek being the soul, the triskele of family with his mom and dad and he the child, the triskele of werewolf dynamics with being a strong alpha, the supportiveness of the beta and the instincts of an omega. Stiles said that his anchor was anger and Derek felt like it was fitting. The anger filling his veins and rushing his blood seemed so strong that he felt like an alpha but he hadn’t even become that, had he or has he? 

It was so confusing; he is seventeen but just a few days ago he was twenty-five but he has no memory of that. He just learnt his whole future – or present someone might call – and wondered what did he asked to get this, to learn this dime and horrible thing that you can ever call a future because then it leaves you no hope for the days to come. He learnt that he got the triskele tattoo; he was always thinking about it. It represents the werewolf dynamics and he has become each and every one of them, or he is going to become? The tattoo, Derek thinks, doesn’t represent the werewolf dynamics anymore. It represents his anger, his endurance and this whole package of horror that he calls as his life. They are all bind together and they won’t ever fade away.

*******

Derek wants to go back to denial but he can’t, he has learnt a lot of about his future self and he doesn’t still remember a single thing. Deaton, who looks much older than Derek remembers him but the oldness have put a wise look in his eyes and trustable expression on his face, gives him something to drink and Derek drinks without even asking what it is. It tastes horrible, even worse than that time Laura tried to make smoothies for them and she had put salt instead of sugar and added way too much yoghurt and probably put mud instead of bananas. When he drinks all of the weird potion thing, Deaton starts on a spell that is in an ancient language and the melodic hit of the spell is strangely able to put Derek at ease and Derek wants to laugh because he should be crazy if he thinks that he can be put at ease but hope is a strong infection, right?

Deaton is done within minutes and announces that his memories should be back in about three hours and he will be himself in a day or two and Derek wants to protest to the words because he is himself, he will become the future Derek where he frowns way too much for his health and hides behind walls like a soldier after seeing gore and death and pain in years of war and probably suffers from multiple mental disorders that he doesn’t even realize. He is not too sure that he wants to become that but nobody is asking for his opinions and that seems to be his life so he goes with it.

Kate tries to reach out to him, several times but Derek is able to shut her down and either have a breakdown when she tried to get inside his mind or started to rage and smash everything that he had in his way. The people around him are oddly calm about his behaviors though, except for the werecoyote whose name is Malia. She runs on basic animal instincts, Stiles tells her, after being a coyote for eight years after killing her family on a full moon. Derek thinks that she is the one who can most relate to him and understands that she thinks that either he is a spoiled brat or a mama’s boy and Derek can see him future self being like that, being cold and non-human like a machine running on calculations. After all the things that his future self has been through; it is still a wonder how he survives.

Stiles is the one who is trying to help him the most. He talks about their time together and Derek thinks that for a minute that they are actually dating or close to dating and still on the flirting stage and when he express that to Stiles, he is just blushing in all shades of red and tells him that he couldn’t get the idea any more wrong. After that, Derek is pretty much convinced that they are dating or at least his future self wants to. He just doesn’t know what to do with what he feels because everything he touches turns into ash or rots and he can see that he is trying to stay away from this boy that he can’t endure hurting.

The way Stiles moves with too many hand gestures and the rapid way he talks and how he loses his focus so easily or how his eyes turns into different shades of brown in one conversation or how he chews down on his lower lip and makes it flush or how he says everything that comes to his mind and then feels either ashamed or sorry about it or the way his body moves when he is excited to tell a certain story and Derek could just go on all day. He realizes that he is actually starting to remember some things because he is sure that he just didn’t observe these things but he had been observing them for a long time. He starts to remember names; he remembers who is who on the photo that he saw in Scott’s room. All of his betas; Erica and Boyd are deceased while Isaac just left him for Scott and then he just left for good. The other brunette was called Allison Argent and she was the niece of Kate but who caused her family to change in a better way and gave her life for it. How much each and every one of the alive members of the photo have changed; Lydia has grown into a woman that is still too smart for her own good but she has lost the childish cockiness and ignorance she once had, Scott is becoming more of an alpha every day and losing the shell that was once this poor teenage kid who just wanted to be popular, Stiles turning into a real man with sharper features and a mind that is more dangerous than anything.

Derek remembers it all.

The memories don’t overflow in his mind; it is like they are being put to their rightful places to stay put this time. It doesn’t crush him like he expects it to; he isn’t hit by more grief and pain as he has expected. He realizes that his future self is beyond self-loathe. He has accepted his awful past and he is trying to move on, seize the day. He is not stuck between the deaths and the losses in his past that still hunt from time to time; he tries to raises his eyes to the sky and wonder what the next day will bring him but he doesn’t wonder if they will be bad or good, he just goes by whatever he can have and knows the value of small things. 

Derek realizes that his older self is not just bushy eyebrows and frowns and doesn’t bark orders and threats. His older self has also grown with these kids; into a man that was full with guilt and self-loathe but into someone that just seizes the day. The triskele he has between his shoulder blades doesn’t represent the pains of his past; it represents hope, friends and the future.

His body is back to its old self before midnight; the change so sudden and fast that Derek doesn’t first realize that he is growing taller and taller as becoming much more built and his tan getting a bit darker also as he is growing out body hair like crazy. He has the memories of his younger self when he was turned into him. He remembers how he felt, what he thought of. When he gets up he is grateful that he has been able to find his way to live. He walks, follows the smell; he sees the only person that he really wants to see and all he can do is do what he has promised himself to do. He grabs Stiles who is working on his jeep religiously and pulls him to his chest and looks at his large, nearly amber but not quite light brown eyes and kisses those pulp lips that he has been haunted for. Stiles kisses him back and they hold onto each other like it is their last chance to have this one kiss and he thinks that his younger self was right; they should have been dating before. It is a strange thing; to see that he wanted to have Stiles along his side he had to be turned into his younger self by Kate Argent. His life is the weirdest story that will ever be written and Derek doesn’t care about that anymore; he only cares about seizing the day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: [talk to me people!](http://childofbroadvalley.tumblr.com/)


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